Today's Review: One Day

One Day stars Jim Sturgess and Anne Hathaway as Dexter and Emma, two people who meet on July 15th, 1988, after they graduate from university. After a somewhat unsuccessful attempt at doing some sex, they remain friends, but there is something that still lingers and grows between them. This movie basically takes place over the span of 23 years, but each scene takes place on the same day of the year, July 15th. As the years progress and Emma and Dexter go in and out of jobs and relationships, we begin to see the special bond growing between them that started on that one day in 1988.

The concept is quite interesting. It really serves to propel the story along and start dealing with the next thing to pop up in our heroes' lives. Sometimes long running love stories like this can be dragged down by dwelling on a certain point in time for too long, but One Day keeps the story fresh, and really helps to encapsulate the lives of these two people. The only problem is that it's perhaps a little too fast. Before we can get used to the state of their lives in one year, we're thrust into the next, and the story on the whole feels a little disjointed and stuttering.

There is a certain chemistry between Sturgess and Hathaway, but their performances aren't really amazing enough to make this movie great. The fact that Hathaway is an American playing an English woman shows at times too, as her accent wavers from posh to not so at various points throughout. At least she doesn't devolve into Dick Van Dyke territory though.

So yes, One Day is not an amazing movie. It's a fresh idea though, and is relatively well executed, despite the limitations that come packaged with it. I can't help but compare it to the superior 500 Days Of Summer, which showed the rise and fall of a relationship in a much better way, juxtaposing the good directly with the bad through time jumping techniques. Or maybe I just liked it because Zooey Deschanel was in it. Ahh, Zooey.

My rating: 3/5